Friday, 19 September 2014

According to Brand's report, published in 1787, he noticed an “irregularity” in the patient’s “external parts.” After further examination, he concluded that the child’s “part, which had the appearance of the labia pudenda, was in fact the scrotum,” and suggested an “operation to free the penis from its confinement.” He went ahead and made some alterations, enabling the child—whose name is unknown—“to urinate standing up, wear trousers, and enjoy the privileges of being a male.”

The child's wishes were of course deemed irrelevant. As they are all too often today.

Monday, 8 September 2014

A British woman says she's been forced to surrender her dream life in Australia, after discovering her birth certificate lists her as a boy.
Mother-of-five Kim Walmsey was mistakenly recorded as a male at her birth in 1965, meaning her marriage of 23 years was illegal

Upon discovering the mistake, Walmsey found herself unable to renew her Australian visa and spending over £150,000 on a mission to set things right in the UK.
Worse, when word got out in her Liverpool neighbourhood, Walmsey became the victim of homophobic slurs as neighbours believed she was in a gay marriage.

Kim told the Mail, “The whole thing is absolutely disgusting. I’ve lived nearly 40 years not realising I was actually registered as a boy and then all of a sudden my whole life fell apart.
“In the eyes of the law we were technically two men marrying and that was against the law at the time.
"Since I found out I have tried everything I can possibly think of to get it changed but it’s like banging your head against a brick wall."

Westminster sanctuary ruled her marriage to Jack, a security officer, was against the law, which was confirmed in a letter from the Arch Bishop of Canterbury in June last year, the Mirror reports

Walmsey’s MP Bill Esterson has written to UK Prime Minister David Cameron on her behalf.
"This is a ludicrous case of a mistake which was made nearly half a century ago, which is still plaguing Kim and her family today," he said.
"The fact that Kim is obviously a female is unquestionable. She has five biological children, but because her birth entry states that she is male, she is having these problems which are causing great distress to Kim and her whole family."

So even a woman who has given birth to 5 kids can't get her birth certificate corrected. And suffers from the effects of Transphobic/Homophobic neighbours as she's in a "same sex relationship" with "another man".

“We live in a small community and we felt really intimidated. I don’t
want people thinking I’ve had a sex change," she told the paper.
“Some people might think the kids are adopted and that I’m trying to hide the fact I’m a man.
“My
death certificate will say I’m a boy too and so when I’m dead and
buried, my family down the line will think there was this huge scandal.”

It's all about appearances. If it's this bad for someone in this situation who hasn't "changed sex" - consider what it must be like for someone who has?

Monday, 1 September 2014

Cross-sex hormone treatment of transgender adults leads to very few
long-term side effects, according to the authors of the largest study to
date to examine this issue.
More than 2000 patients from 15
US and European centers participated in the retrospective study, called
Comorbidity and Side Effects of Cross-Sex Hormone Treatment in
Transsexual Subjects, and nearly 1600 received at least 1 year of
follow-up, the authors reported.
"Our results are very
reassuring," principal investigator Henk Asscheman, MD, PhD, who heads
HAJAP, his clinical research company in Amsterdam, the Netherlands,
told Medscape Medical News. "There are mostly minor side effects and no new [adverse events] observed in this large population."
Speaking at ICE/ENDO 2014
last week, where he presented the initial results of the research, Dr.
Asscheman said the data confirm findings from smaller studies
published in the past decade.
"The take-home message," he said, "is that when using the guidelines from the Endocrine Society
["Endocrine Treatment of Transsexual Persons"], you are not going
to see a lot of comorbidities with cross-sex hormone treatment."

About Me

Actually, I am a Rocket Scientist.
Also hormonally odd (my blood has 46xy chromosomes anyway) and for most of my life, I looked male, and lived as one, trying to be the best Man a Gal could be. Anyway, in May 2005 that started changing naturally for reasons still unclear, and I'm now Zoe, not Alan : happier and more relaxed not to have to pretend any more.
UPDATE - reason now identified as the 3BHSD form of CAH.

Reviews

This blog, written by a rocket scientist, is a fascinating collection of information, both personal and scientific, regarding intersex, transsexualism and related psychosocial and psychosexual issues....It is erudite and heartfelt. Just read the posts about the passport issue. You won't know whether to laugh, weep or crawl into a ball and rock gently in a corner - an amazing person.- David---The reason I so appreciate bright, perceptive people - as opposed to ideologues whose intelligence does little to illuminate - is that they manage to both instruct and learn with a certain grace. Among such rarities in the transblogosphere is Zoe, whose direct speech and clear humanity always make her worth reading, even if one doesn’t always agree with her every conclusion.- Val---The following is a request for permission to archive your A.E.Brain blog site which we have wanted to do for several years...The Library has traditionally collected items in print, but it is also committed to preserving electronic publications of lasting cultural value....Since (1996) we have been identifying online publications and archiving those that we consider have national significance....We would like to include A.E.Brain blog site in the PANDORA Archive...-Australian National Library